We’re introducing a new feature here at Canadian Animation Resources, along with a new contributor, Rohan Connolly. For the purposes of full disclosure, Rohan is my daughter, so this is nepotism at its finest. Rohan also watches a lot of movies and knows a thing or two about animation. She’s a regular attendee at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, puts up with all my cartoon chatter on a regular basis, and even made her first piece of animation this past fall at an NFB workshop.
Rohan’s been working hard to learn how to deliver comprehensive movie reviews, and today we’re going to present you with her first. It’s for Santa Buddies, which is primarily live action, but does have a strong VFX component, so that’s good enough for me.
Here you go!
The plot: First we see Santa Clause and Santa Paws walking with a lantern to an ice cave with a giant icicle in the ice cave.
The only animation was how they make the mouths of the dogs move.
It was a good movie.
Dogs and Christmas, I can’t stop thinking about that. And the movie was about that too.
I would recommend it to everyone who loves puppies, but mostly kids that are at least seven years old, or eight or nine. Some young kids might not understand the true meaning of Christmas, and to find out, they should just watch the movie and listen carefully and here is the true meaning of Christmas: treat other the way you want to be treated, it’s not just about getting presents, it’s about giving and having respect in your heart.
Thanks Ro. We just watched Roger Rabbit this weekend, so I’m hoping she’ll get to that one next.
This is a great idea man. Nice one.
You should form a section of the site where people can submit pilots or shorts that are geared towards her age group, then get her and her friends to give producers feedback!
Nice one!
BEST. REVIEW. EVER!!!!
Right on!
Hi hi!! This is very cute stuff indeed!! And I guess getting the thoughts of animation’s main audience (in other word, kids) is a nice initiative. But does such highly personal and subjective inputs has its place in a community focused website like this one???
Hi C.
Thanks for taking the time to comment. While the site is indeed community focused, I’ve never shied away from the fact that it’s also an extension of my take on animation in this country. I do my best to provide as much content as possible, but admittedly, it goes through one major filter: me. I put a lot of myself into the site, and do my best to be clear about my own opinions and biases. Not every feature on here will be to everyone’s liking. 8 year old movie reviews may not be for you, but I hope there’s enough other stuff on here to keep you coming back.
Cheers!
m
As dear is this is, I was under the impression this was a website for creating community amongst professional animators.
Considering how hard is has been to unify animators on a national and let alone, a local level, I feel reviews such as these may dilute the purpose of this website. Am I wrong? What is the purpose of this website, as I am getting mixed impressions of what this site is trying to be. I am finding it is losing much focus and relevance to my career as an animator.
Shouldn’t reviews like these be left for personal blogs? Is Canadian Animation Resources just your personal blog?
I do not mean to be negative, I am just trying to figure if this is going to be a relevant website for me, as a professional animator looking for a central hub of Canadian animation news and community.
Thanks.
Hi Isabel and C!
I think this is still very much a place for professionals to get information on the industry and hopefully draw the animation community closer together.
It does have articles that are more opinion,(mine) as well as information on upcoming jobs/events and who is doing what.
I think it is sort of refreshing to have the opinion of someone from the age group that we work for more often than not. It isn’t the only thing on the site though, just some fun now and again!
Maybe you would like to add some thoughts as to what else you would like to see here? I think that would be great!
As Oscar Wilde once said, ” The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of use to oneself.”
Hey Rob, didn’t you go to high school with Oscar Wilde? He wrote that quote in your yearbook didn’t he?
I definitely want the C.A.R. to be a serious industry site, and a serious professional community site. I think the tone of many of the articles can be light and non-serious. Like ‘weekly Rex Bunyan’ I can see ‘8 year old movie reviews’ as a potential light-hearted distraction from more serious content.
I think the current ratio is probably 10-1 in terms of serious to light content so I think the balance is okay right now for me. I agree with Rob that we need much more input from the community in order to shape the site to be more suitable. Maybe we need to do a survey of the site visitors to see what they want.
I agree Mark.
Oscar was a year ahead of me. Nobody really liked him in school either.
Throwing in my 2-cents worth, it would be nice to see more than just feedback from the community, in terms of supporting the site. I’m not sure how many people are aware that Mike and his contributors do this on their own time, and for the most part, run the site using their own money. Mike does not charge the animation companies to post the job listings because he feels it’s important to let you know what’s out there.
This site is already a great resource, and the potential to bring the community closer together exists, but it requires funding in order to allow Mike to spend more time on reaching that potential! So, if you have ever used the site to find work, get information, or have ever made a comment about what could be better about the site, then perhaps it’s time to start putting something back into it! I, for one, have already donated some money to keep the website going, and I encourage anyone else in the community who feels it’s important to have a forum and a means to bring everyone closer together to do the same.
Hey thanks Mike, I get your point 😉
I don’t know CAR from its start and was mainly dragged around because it’s probably the only community centre we have for our profession in the country (Canada wide). There is a lot of awesome content and it’s very great to stay updated. So I guess I was a bit scared that the website turns out to be something less serious.
On another hand, I noticed that you probably do not receive much input from Montreal. Not much job post or news, even though a lot of thing is going around. Mind if I mail you when I see something?
Anyways, keep up the great work.
Cheers!
Thanks to everybody for chiming in on this. I’m doing my best to keeep things informative and accessible. Providing content on a daily basis is challenging, especially when it’s not a full time gig, so I do my best. Mark and Robbie have made this a lot easier lately, with their excellent columns. I’ll continue to keep posting every job I can find and anything else that fels relevant to the readers. But I also made a very conscious decision when I started the original blog, one that I think is clear in the langueage I’ve chosen when talking about the site. Canadian Animation Resources is aimed at the members of our animation community, rather than our animation industry. I want to be as inclusive as possible, and that means animators, both industry-t yupes and independents, other animation workers, students, and animation fans too. SOme content will be lighter, some more business-oriented. Like I said above, I hope there’s enough here to keep you coming back.
I have a lot of other plans for the site, somme of it that could prove quite exciting. But, followingup on Jeniffer’s comment, I’m limited simply by what I can afford to do. So far, the site has had one paid advertiser, at a seriously discounted rate from what was originally projected, and 2 donations. Now don’t get me wrong, I get excited every day just to see the hit count. The fact that you guys come here at all goves me hope. And then when any of you take the time to comment, you’re doing your part. You’re caring enough to get involved, even if it’s just in the conversation. Without that we’re dead in the water. It would be great if I could do this full time. I’d love the site to make enough money to support itself, but that’s not the reality. So we’ll kep doing this. Myself, Mark, Rob, and anyone who sends me a press release, a job post or a news tip. It would be great if a few of you could support with your wallet, sure! I still owe my web guy a few bucks from the last round of work he did for me. I mean, even coffee costs five bucks these days. I get 300 viewers a day. If each one of you guys did the price of a coffee each month, that would mean a lot to me and the services I could provide. But that’s not why I’m doing this. I felt very strongly that we needed something like this, and I still do. So I’m doing it. And Mark’s doing it, and Rob’s doing it.
And there are other people doing it too. Mark Mayerson, Chris Robinson, Tamu Townsend, Ron Doucet, Dominic von Riedemann. Look them up, read them. I’d love to have them all here and try to link to them when I can.
And C, you can do it too. Quebec is under-represented here. The Quebec media culture in Canada exists in a bit of a bubble and I’d love to bridge the gap more often. Email me anytime you have something that might be of interest.
Thanks guys, for reading, for writing. Keep it up.
m
Thank you for this informative review